The Pain Of Losing Your Best Friend Unexpectedly

The news will hit you like a punch in the gut. You’ll shake, you’ll cry, and you’ll try to deny it. You’ll see all the rest in peace posts on their Facebook wall and you will pinch and prod yourself as you try to wake yourself up. It’ll feel like a living nightmare that you can’t snap out of.

That you will never snap out of.

When you lose your best friend, you’ll bawl your eyes out and weep for the good times and the times you never got to spend with them. You’ll think about the future plans that never worked out due to time or money. You’ll look back at those text messages and realize that the last words you said to them wasn’t “I love you”… Instead, it was something normal and you’ll wish it were otherwise. You’ll blow up their phone and their mother will probably be there, sitting next to it, watching it light up with every text message that comes in by the second. And then you’ll feel bad. But you need to tell them that you can’t do life without them. You’ll ask them to come back. You’ll damn them for leaving you.

You’ll damn everyone and the universe because they left you.

As the days or weeks go on, you’ll eventually attend their funeral or their wake or whatever it is that their friends and family picked out. And you’ll be completely still, completely anxious and filled with every emotion on your way there. Your hands will shake. You’ll smoke endlessly or drink just to get you through the day. Or you’ll be better and show up without the smell of nicotine and alcohol on you. But sometimes, that’s what you need to get you through. And trust me when I say that no one there will judge you because they’re trying to cope, too.

They’re trying to cope and so are you.

But sometimes that doesn’t work out.

Sometimes coping doesn’t help and you might come to realize that the five stages of grief are bullshit and you’ll never want to hear or talk about them ever again. Yes, you might have gone through some of them—bargaining and denial are the worst. The depression hits and you’ll be angry. You’ll be so, so angry and you won’t know what for. You’ll want to slam your fist into a wall or scream at the top of your lungs because you feel like you’re all alone now that they’re gone. And you’ll want to talk to them, beg for them to come back, but you know it’s no use.

Eventually, you’ll feel the survivor’s guilt kick in. The dumb realization that it should’ve been you. But you’ll realize immediately that’s not how the world works, but you’ll think it anyway. You’ll tell people that your life is useless and pointless compared to theirs. That more people loved them than you. And you’ll say that they mean more to the world than you ever could and when you see their family hurting, you’ll want to say that it should’ve been you so they don’t have to cry the tears that they do.

You’ll break down as you stare at the clothes that you wore to their funeral. You’ll never want to touch them again. They’ll go through the wash once and then hang for the rest of eternity, forever locked into bad memories that should’ve never been created in the first place. Those dark or colorful pieces of cloth will never be the same again.

You will never be the same again.

A chunk of you will be missing until the end of time.

Some days will feel better than others, but as time goes on, you’ll still have the urge to text them or call them to tell them something important, but you’ll immediately set your phone down as you realize that it can’t happen again. Someone else probably has their number now and no stranger wants the “come back to me” text that you so desperately want to send, even if it’s been months after the terrible incident.

Other days, you will laugh.

Sometimes you will spend your days crying and breaking down out of nowhere at the single thought of them. You try your best to hold yourself together, but it’s too hard. It’s too difficult when you remember that your life is missing a major player.

Then you’ll remember them and how they wouldn’t want you to cry and how they wouldn’t want you to hurt because they never meant to cause you such pain. They didn’t mean to do this. It was just some terrible timing.

And in the end, you will miss them forever because nothing will be the same. Your daily routine will be all mixed up, but every now and then you will smile at the sky and thank whomever for letting them be part of your life. You’ll feel like they were too good for you, but the fact is that they were your perfect fit, the best friend that you’ll ever know.

When you lose your best friend, everything changes in an instant. But I promise you that it’ll all be OK. They can promise you that it will all be OK. Eventually in time, everything will heal as best as it can. You will always feel that empty hole in your heart the moment you wake up, but you’ll soon realize that everything will be OK, even if you break down at school or in the grocery store. The ways you grieve and the ways you feel are normal, and no one can tell you otherwise.

Believe me when I say that you’ll be all right.